Yes, you read the title right. For the seventh time in the past decade (well, ten years and two months), a Spider-Man film is on the top of the weekend domestic box office charts. Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” stayed at number one for two weeks in 2002, and its sequels did the same in 2004 and 2007, respectively. Now, here in 2012, director Marc Webb’s “The Amazing Spider-Man” is on top once again after making $65 million this weekend and $140 million over the course of its six-day opening.

“Spider-Man’s” $65 million debut weekend is the fifth largest opening of the year, behind only “The Avengers” ($207 million), “The Hunger Games” ($155 million), “The Lorax” ($70 million), and “Brave” ($66 million). But “Spidey’s” $140 million did allow it to beat out the six-day gross of some other recent comic book reboots, namely “Batman Begins” and “X-Men: First Class,” which made $79.5 million and $69.9 million over their first six days, respectively.

However, perhaps the best way to judge “The Amazing Spider-Man’s” success is to compare it to that of Sam Raimi’s trilogy. The reboot found itself right behind the first “Spider-Man’s” six day total of $144.2 million. However, “Spider-Man 2” grossed $180.1 million and “Spider-Man 3” $176.2 million, meaning the newest film actually made the least of any “Spidey” movie to date. And while “The Amazing Spider-Man” beat out “Batman Begins” in terms of gross, Christopher Nolan’s film had the best six-day start of any Batman film at the time. Of course, “The Dark Knight” later upped the ante.

After breaking “The Hangover’s” record for best debut by an original R-rated comedy (i.e. not counting “The Hangover Part II“) last weekend, Seth McFarlane’s “Ted,” remained strong, grossing $32.6 million in its second weekend. For comparison’s sake, “The Hangover” made just under $32.8 million in its second weekend, and “Ted’s” ten-day total of $120.2 million bests “The Hangover” over the same period.

In its third weekend, “Brave” remained in third place with $20.162 million. The Pixar flick has now grossed $174.5 million to date, which means it’s all but assured to be the studio’s tenth movie to accumulate $200 million.

Oliver Stone’s “Savages” came in fourth place with $16 million in its opening weekend, which isn’t all that bad considering its competition. Behind it, “Magic Mike,” “Madea’s Witness Protection,” and “Madagascar 3” slid into the fifth, sixth, and seventh spots with $15.6, $10.1, and $7.5 million, respectively.

The weekend’s soft release was “Katy Perry: Part of Me,” which came in eighth place with $7.1 million. In ninth and tenth place we saw a couple strong showings from films teetering on the edge of the “specialty box office” label. Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom” grossed $4.5 million from 884 theaters, while in its third week Woody Allen’s “To Rome with Love” added 777 theaters, giving it a total of 806 and making $3.5 million.

Overall, it was a strong weekend at the box office. The nation’s top 12 films grossed $187.1 million, a 28 percent bump from this time last year.

“The Avengers‘” domestic gross dropped 50 percent this weekend. Oh well, what are you gonna do? You can’t win ‘em all and other cliches. Hold on a moment, I’m receiving word from staff mathematicians that a 50 percent drop from $207 million is still over $100 million. I hereby retract my first two sentences. Oh, and for those of you that didn’t get it, the title is a pun. I like puns.

Yes, “The Avengers” made a lot more money this weekend. Surprise! Last week, the film broke a whole bunch of records, it had the largest opening weekend in history, set new highs for Saturday ($69.7 million) and Sunday ($50.1 million), and had the highest ever per-theater average for a nationwide release with $46,057. It also reached $100 million, $150 million, and $200 million faster than any other movie. That trend continued this weekend, as the film had the best second weekend ever, trouncing “Avatar’s” $75.6 million, setting new highs for eight, nine, and ten-day grosses, and becoming the fastest film to reach $300 and $350 million.

Last week, the top weekend market share for a single film was just about the only record “The Avengers” didn’t break. The film’s $207 million was 83.1 percent of the total weekend gross, just behind “Spider-Man 3′s” 83.3. percent. However in its second week “The Avengers” took 64 percent of the total gross, the nineteenth highest figure of all time. “Spider-Man 3″ only took a measly 60.4 percent in its second week. That’s not even in the top 20. Take that Parker!

Anyway, with “The Avengers” raking in so much cash, there wasn’t a whole lot of room left for other movies, even new ones, and especially bad ones. I’m talking to you, my imagined personification of Tim Burton’s “Dark Shadows.” You suck. I’m looking down at you just like you’re looking down at that Troll doll, and so is everyone involved in the making of “The Avengers.”

“Dark Shadows” looks especially bad when compared to the opening weekends of other recent Tim Burton/Johnny Depp collaborations. The film’s $28.8 million is less than a quarter of “Alice in Wonderland’s” $116.1 million and barely half of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s” $56.2 million. Furthermore, my staff mathematicians are joking about how well those numbers work together, 29 goes into 116 four times and 28 goes into 56 twice. I told those nerds to shut up.

In other news, “Think Like a Man” continues to plow forward, bringing in $6.3 million this weekend and raising its total gross to a relatively impressive $89.1 million. Likewise “The Hunger Games” made $4.4 million, bringing its total to $386.9 million. Of course, the film will inevitably yield 2012′s top spot to “The Avengers” by next weekend.

Everybody knew “The Avengers” would make money. Everybody. They’ve been building up to it for what seems like a decade, Joss Whedon was at the helm, it sat at 94 percent on the Tomatometer, it made $185 million in its overseas debut. In so many words, all the pieces were in place. That said, I don’t know if anybody expected this.

“The Avengers” made a record-breaking $200.3 million, the largest opening weekend in history. The total trounces the previous high of $169.2 million, set by “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2″ last summer.

Along the way, “The Avengers” toppled a number of other major records. It reached $100 million, $150 million, and $200 million faster than any other movie, set new highs for Saturday ($69.7 million) and Sunday ($50.1 million), and had the highest ever per-theater average for a nationwide release with $46,057. The only high score “The Avengers” didn’t take is largest opening day, making only $80.5 million to the “The Deathly Hallows Part 2′s” $91 million.

“The Avengers’” worldwide total of $641.8 million has already overtaken all of the team’s individual members’ totals. Coming closest are the “Iron Man” films, the first made $585 million and the second $624 million, while “Thor” made $449 million and “Captain America” took in $364 million. Oh, and for those of you counting “The Incredible Hulk” made $263 million.

The film didn’t make all that money without good reason. “The Dark Knight” may be the best ever movie about a superhero, but “The Avengers” is the best superhero movie. It played like a comic book, lighthearted and witty, but the action scenes did not disappoint. It seems there’d be a thick line between pleasing fanboys and those who have never picked up a comic in their lives, but “The Avengers” made it fine and walked that tightrope with grace. Everybody expected Robert Downey Jr. to continue to be great as Tony Stark, especially with Joss Whedon writing his lines, and he did not disappoint. But the film’s biggest question mark, Mark Ruffalo in his new role as the Hulk, stole the show.

Now, I could talk about how much all those other films made, but with these numbers it’s got to be pretty clear not many people who went to the movies this weekend saw something other than “The Avengers.” In fact, the film accounted for 82.7 percent of the roughly $242 million earned by the top 12 movies this weekend. That’s the second highest weekend market share of all time, behind only “Spider-Man 3′s” 83.3 percent.

Even more than before, studio development executives will be combing through scripts looking for something about female humans in love with handsome young monsters whose unspeakable urges can only be controlled if they immediately remove their shirts. “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” earned an estimated $140.7 million this weekend for mini-major Summit Entertainment, which is now a bit more major and a bit less mini. As both jolly Carl DiOrio and Nikki Finke remind us, that puts it right behind the opening weekends of “The Dark Knight” and “Spider-Man 3,” displacing, as per Finke, “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” with its pitiful $135.6 million.

“New Moon” enjoyed a spectacular Friday performance of $72.7 million, an all-time record one-day take, but dropped by what DiOrio describes as a “manageable” 41% to earn a still terrific $43.2 million on Saturday. (Finke, plays the baseball statistician and mentions that the two-day total $115.9 million makes for the biggest two-day gross of all time, and also gets into other November openings, if you think that stuff is important.) Still, by the end of this weekend, most of the really hardcore “Twilight” fans will have seen “New Moon.” The question remaining is how many casual viewers, plus repeat hardcore fans, will return for the big Thanksgiving day weekend.

There was another surprise this weekend: I was right about one of my casual box office prognostications! Based on the true story of the NFL’s Michael Oher, “The Blind Side” starring Sandra Bullock and newcomer Quinton Aaron supported by country singer Tim McGraw and Kathy Bates, proved the sturdiness of the inspirational sports film genre. The sub-genre goes back at least as far back as 1940′s “Knute Rockne All American” and in this case won an estimated $34.5 million for the gipper and Warner Brothers, pretty much in line with what I wrote on Thursday. Astonishing.

According to Finke, the prognosticaters had only pegged this one for a maximum of $20 million, but they didn’t reckon, I suppose, with the cross gender and generational appeal of the story as well as its cross-cultural/ethnic impact which spans the inner-city and red state America, and both conservative and liberal perspectives common in Obama’s America. Lou Loumenick quotes this line uttered by country star Tim McGraw in the role of Bullock’s husband: “Who ever thought we would have a black son before we knew a Democrat?”

In the #3 spot this week was the big holdover from last weekend, Roland Emmerich’s “2012” which dropped a not-so-great 59% in its second week — spurred on, perhaps, by bad word of mouth from people like the 20-something male checker at the Walgreen’s next door to me who volunteered his views to me a couple of nights back. The mega-disaster flick earned a relatively modest estimated $25 million for Sony on it’s second weekend for a total so far of $108 million. That’s still well short of it’s $200 million budget, which I find a bit obscene, but it’s current foreign total is $341.1 milion. Ah, the international language of blowing-shit-up.

Bringing up the rear of the new releases is the poorly reviewed “Planet 51,” which apparently shows that even CGI animated family comedies can be hurt by poor buzz if that buzz is bad enough. Also, while our own Jason Zingale was unimpressed, “Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire” continued its unusually strong performance as it expanded this week. As explicated via table at Box Office Mojo, the downbeat tale of inner city dysfunction earned an impressive $11 million in only 629 theaters (as compared to 3,035 for “Planet 51″).

Of the two films debuting from undisputed world class directors and huge international stars, German man-of-the-world/universe Werner Herzog’s critically embraced “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” starring Nicolas Cage had a disappointing debut of only $257,000 in 27 theaters despite great reviews and considerable buzz. On the other hand, Spain’s brilliant twosome of Pedro Aldomovar and Penelope Cruz earned back some of that lost “Planet 51″ cred for their nation by taking in the week’s highest per screen average ($54,000) with their latest, “Broken Embraces.” That’s on only two screens, but it’s a start.

* Robert Rodriguez is producing a “Predator” reboot, entitled “Predators,” to be directed by Hungarian-American helmer Nimród Antal. As per today’s Variety, along for the ride are Adrien Brody and Topher Grace. I, personally, will wait for the movie to decide first whether I’ll bother to see it and second whether these two undoubtedly talented actors are well cast here. (Grace is kind of a personal favorite and this sounds like chance to be sort of a badass Norman Bates, which I can kind of see.) However, as usual geek film bloggers and some film geek bloggers can’t wait for the movie to have an opinion, and Spout’s Christopher Campbell collates the reaction. No word on Brody’s chances for eventually becoming a not-too competent and unlucky governor of California.

* Two very tentative but interesting items from Mike Fleming today. Gary Ross, who’s past specialty was such seriocomic Oscarish fare as “Dave,” “Pleasantville,” and “Seabiscuit” but who is doing the the latest rewrite on the next “Spiderman” film may also be directing as well as rewriting a proposed “Venom” movie, without Topher Grace, most likely. The many problems with “Spider-Man 3” to my mind had nothing at all to do with Grace, but who said life was fair?

* The second Fleming item has screenwriter-director Bill Condon (“Dreamgirls“) “in discussions” to return to biographical material somewhat along the lines of “Gods and Monsters” and “Kinsey,” with a proposed film about the late Richard Pryor to star Marlon Wayans. Adam Sandler‘s “Happy Madison” company is involved at this point, which makes sense given the reverence nearly all modern comedians have for Pryor.

* Speaking of people who’ve been known to throw a few M-F bombs in the name of a laugh, our own Will Harris has an interview with the praised and maligned indie film mainstay and part-time funny de facto stand-up comic, Kevin Smith at Bullz-Eye. Very definitely worth a read. And, though I probably don’t need to say it, the following video is NSFW and is just plain dangerous to your life and career if you are anywhere near Gwyneth Paltrow, Steven Spielberg, or George Lucas.